History, as wide a topic as it is, seems to be one element that I return to again and again. It makes us the way that we are. Youth disregards it, and power embraces it. It is what we are, even as it is being made. Ultimately, it is the idea that the absurdity of the past, coupled with our certainty about our present, has a tendency to make us feel quite clever about ourselves which, unless we are at the end of a continuum, is absurd.